Do you think it might still work even though she's previously been on the Bene-Bac daily for two months straight? Not sure if I worded it right in my earlier response, or if I've misunderstood yours, but she was receiving the Bene-Bac every day from mid December to mid February (a couple weeks ago), and still having the same problems. I'm just uncertain of trying the same thing again when it failed to produce results the first time.

It's entirely possible she was mill-bred, born to an underweight and ill-nourished mom, in dirty and overcrowded conditions. That could account for the nails and possibly mal-development of her GI tract.

I'd drop the bene-bac and do poop soup for at least a few weeks.

Is she on any pain medication?

Pigs with GI upset can actually benefit from eating paper and cardboard. Give her some toilet paper roll cores or paper towel roll cores (without residual adhesive), cut lengthwise so she doesn't get stuck in them, and snip off the sharp corners of the cut to protect her eyes. She may actually eat them and in my experience that's fine; it's insoluble, indigestible fiber that may actually help her GI.

They dissolve easily in water and the pigs usually like them. The main thing is that they're NOT a huge megadose, where most B's for adults are, and most kids' vitamins have other vitamins in them that you don't need or want. Whole Foods-type places often have them.

Hm. Has anyone had any experience with probiotics seeming to lose effectiveness? I've been poop souping her every day (minus the first weekend as I was out of town) and it did seem to work better than the Bene-Bac for the first while... however, this weekend she's relapsed into diarrhea again despite still receiving poop soup daily. Now that I think about it, this is exactly what happened with the Bene-bac.

Mill-bred would make sense, as she was from a pet store (I now know this is a bad idea). I hope this isn't causing her pain. She seems to behave normally as well, and she hasn't lost any weight during this recent set of episodes (even seems to have possibly gained a little, as she's been weighing pretty consistently around 580g this week). I did give her some fresh veggies again starting the beginning of this week since she seemed to be doing so well, but only very small pieces- one, maybe two pieces of carrot or bell pepper a day each smaller than the size of my pinky fingernail (and I have an average sized pinky nail).

To answer your question Talishan, no she isn't on any pain medication currently- sorry I missed it when I read your response the first time!

I'm just kinda confused cause it did work... at first. I'm still doing the poop soup even though it seems like it stopped working, maybe this is just some random fluke.

(edit: I also haven't had the chance to pick up any B tablets yet but I think I'll give that a try this week, thank you for the information on it!)

(second edit: Also I did put in a paper towel roll cut up for her, I actually had stopped doing that cause she got stuck in one once but hadn't thought to just cut a slit down the middle! She's been chewing on it a little bit every day.)

Probiotics isn't an exact science. Nobody really knows what should in them for guinea pigs, or for humans, for that matter. Some vets don't think they work at all, others do.

So it's possible, at least in my mind, for them to work for a while and then stop. But, if I were you, I'd cut out all veggies until she has normal feces, and then add them back one at a time, 48 hours between each new one.

To be clear, I did already do that in reintroducing the pepper and carrot before. There was a period of about a week after I had reintroduced these when her poops were actually looking pretty good(and she's not had veggies of any sort exceeding in total the size of a penny- this is including the thickness, mind you- in any given day in months- not sure if the amount matters here, but it's really a very very small amount). I've also done this several times before in her life. At this point would it make more sense to just cut out veggies entirely, forever?

Also I have been using vitamin C drops in her pellets ever since I cut out veggies for her the first time, I haven't been relying on the very small amount of veg she's gotten for that.

Soft, malformed feces. At her worst it'll be soft serve consistency, sometimes with a small amount of liquid accompanying it which I'll only see leaking out of her bum when I check it. Soft enough to stick to her feet and bum and get tracked all over the fleece. She had a short time of regular oval poops after starting this current round of poop soup, but usually she's somewhere in the middle with mostly solid poops in all sorts of funky shapes and sizes.

I also know she's had gas accompanying it at least occasionally as she farted when I was checking her bum once. What a weird experience.

Have you tried increasing her fiber intake to firm up her poop? Sorry, I haven't read the thread in its entirety, but it sounds like you're using a lot of different medications and perhaps that is only troubling her stomach more?

As for the guinea pig farting on you, my piggy just did that a couple hours ago as I gave her a bath lol

Have you tried increasing her fiber intake to firm up her poop? Sorry, I haven't read the thread in its entirety, but it sounds like you're using a lot of different medications and perhaps that is only troubling her stomach more?

As for the guinea pig farting on you, my piggy just did that a couple hours ago as I gave her a bath lol

Yup! Though she is only on poop soup right now, no other medications. She is also no longer having any fresh veggies currently (but I am using vitamin C drops in her food so she doesn't get deficient in that area). She always has plenty of timothy hay to eat and is fairly good at eating it. She gets Oxbow alfalfa based pellets.

It's understandable not to read the whole thread, when they start getting to be multiple pages it's awful time consuming to go back and read the whole thing.

It really can be too many pages to go through, but it sounds like you are doing the right thing by increasing the fiber content of her diet. I know there was mention of her having a malformed GI tract possibly (although I don't know if you had that ruled out by her vet since I didn't get to read the whole thread). But I am wondering if maybe it was just that she never had vegetables before?

The vet that I took my cavy to (she will now be seeing a specialist on Wednesday) said that he often gets piggies that are put on new diets too soon and it will upset their tummies. So, I am just curious if it was her GI Tract itself or maybe just a combination of so many medications/probiotics and then a new diet (vegetables)

I really don't think the issue is with the vegetables given that when we've started her on them we've done it slowly and with such small amounts.

She's gained a little bit of weight, a few weeks ago she was pretty consistent at 540 or 550g, this week she's been weighing fairly consistently at 560 to 580g! So that's cool, though she is still pretty darn thin and I feel like she should still be gaining more weight than that especially given that she's still somewhat young (she's around 8 or 9 months old). What sorts of things did you have to rule out before coming to the hyperthyroid diagnosis?

Yeah, with how tedious it can be to read back a few pages I can't even imagine what it would be like to try to find multiple different threads! I'm thinking maybe it would be a good idea to put a summary of relevant issues/history every page or two, haha :)

Heather had a small, palpable nodule in her neck/under her jaw/throat area, plus weight loss, the softish stool and a lush, thick coat. All of these are clinical signs of a thyroid nodule causing hyperthyroidism.

Our vet wasn't against trying to surgically remove the nodule if we wanted to, but she wasn't real keen on trying it either and it wasn't getting any larger, or at least not very quickly.

The definitive test for hyperthyroidism is a T4 blood test, which requires more than the 'standard' amount of blood (from a species which is very difficult to get blood from in the first place); it's a special request; not all labs can do it; and it's expensive. So we essentially "ruled in" hyperthyroidism rather than ruling it out. I think Heather did have a T4 done showing elevated levels, but my memory is hazy. I personally would not consider the blood confirmation an absolute necessity, especially in the presence of a nodule on or near the thyroid. MO only.